Before we got into the thick of designing New MailChimp, we did a lot of research and studied the ways our customers work. We were reminded that our customers are under tight deadlines, and when they log in to MailChimp, they don’t have a lot of time to put together a campaign. So we looked for ways to increase efficiency and shave time off of the campaign creation process. We eliminated design elements that didn’t serve a purpose, and reorganized the campaign creation part of the app to make sure the information is clear, useful, and only there when you need it. We think it’s going to help speed up your workflow so you can spend less time in our app.

Here’s a peek at New MailChimp’s campaign creation process and campaign dashboard:

When first I started working at MailChimp four years ago, I had never even coded an HTML email. Sure, I’d been involved in web design since the late ’90s, but emails are a different beast altogether. The learning curve was steep, in large part because documentation on the “art” of HTML email was scattered at best. There wasn’t a one-stop spot to get people up to speed.

When it comes to email development, the prevailing attitudes are confusion and frustration. We want to help change that. That’s what drove us to start this project, and now we have an HTML email reference to share with you.

Read More

Informed decisions require information (that word “informed” is there for a reason), and information is something we’re not short on around here. MailChimp research typically falls into two categories: primary research, which is new research tailored to answer specific questions; and secondary research, which is readily available and relevant research from past studies. Throughout the New MailChimp design process, the research team combined the powers of both our primary and secondary research.

During the redesign, we ran rapid-fire usability tests on commonly used and radically changing features to get immediate feedback. For instance, we wanted to test our Campaign Builder on as many eyes and on as many screens as possible in one day to keep our design schedule on track. We ran around our office with a testing laptop, recording a mix of friends and coworkers as they put the redesign through its paces on laptops and iPads. After several hours of 5-10 minute test sessions, we compiled a prioritized list of bugs, usability issues, and specific changes for our designers to improve. Our UI design performed pretty solidly on standard screen resolutions, but we did find room for workflow improvement on the iPad.

Testing MailChimp on the iPad with Silverback and Reflector

Read More

Most of us call our own shots when it comes to segmenting email lists. We tell the computer what to do. We decide that it’s gender and age that matter, and we submit that query—segment my list into old dudes and young ‘uns. Or maybe it’s domain that matters. Or subscription date. Or something else.

And that’s cool. But what about asking the computer to use your data to decide how it would segment your list for you?

Every time we send a newsletter, we generate interactions. Specifically, clicks are a great source of data for understanding our subscribers’ different interests, and those interests can define segments. In this post, we’re going to investigate how to get Microsoft Excel (or LibreOffice if that’s your poison) to suggest list segments based on past clicks.

This is called data mining or unsupervised learning. It’s called data mining because we’re going to get the computer to dig into your click data and discover some interesting segments on its own. It’s called unsupervised learning, which is a branch of artificial intelligence, because we’re not going to give the computer any past examples of how we’ve segmented. We’ll let it choose what it feels is right.

Read More

Earlier this week, Aarron wrote about the ideas that have guided our design process for New MailChimp, and one of them was ubiquity. Your work shouldn’t depend on where you are and which device you’re using—you should be able to log in to MailChimp and get to work, whether you’re accessing it from a desktop, laptop, or tablet. We’re introducing a completely responsive design, so MailChimp will work on different devices and screen sizes.

For the first peek at New MailChimp, we’ll look at the restructured navigation and search options. Account notifications are now displayed in the nav, and you can switch to Pro mode to simplify the layout, or tap the hamburger icon to expand and collapse menus on the iPhone. Search is in every part of the nav, too, so you can search for subscriber details, campaigns, lists, and reports from anywhere in the app.

Here’s a look at New MailChimp’s navigation, search, and responsive design: